Monday, September 30, 2013

Dirt sample reveals two pints of liquid water per cubic feet, not freely accessible but bound to other minerals in the soil

Water has been discovered in the fine-grained soil on the surface of Mars, which could be a useful resource for future human missions to the red planet, according to measurements made by Nasa's Curiosity rover.

Each cubic foot of Martian soil contains around two pints of liquid water, though the molecules are not freely accessible, but rather bound to other minerals in the soil.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Thousands protest as Sudan officials promise cash

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — Thousands of Sudanese protesters took to the streets of the capital Khartoum late Sunday, chanting "freedom" and renewing calls for their longtime autocratic president to resign after dozens of protesters were killed in a week of demonstrations sparked by austerity measures.

POTISKUM, Nigeria (AP) — Islamic extremists attacked an agricultural college in the dead of night, gunning down dozens of students as they slept in dormitories and torching classrooms in an ongoing Islamic uprising in northeast Nigeria, the school's provost said.

A study suggests that cometary impact would have produced ‘prebiotic’ building blocks of life.

Scientists have shown a new way in which the building blocks of life could have been created on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system.

They fired ultra-fast projectiles into an icy mixture simulating a comet. The shockwave caused chemical reactions that produced “prebiotic” life-building compounds including amino acids, which make up proteins.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

JACKSON, Wyo. — Until recently, Bob Smith had never witnessed two simultaneous earthquake swarms in his 53 years of monitoring seismic activity in and around the Yellowstone Caldera.

Now, Smith, a University of Utah geophysics professor, has seen three swarms at once.

"It's very remarkable," Smith said. "How does one swarm relate to another? Can one swarm trigger another and vice versa?"

Because concurrent swarms have never been detected in the past, the answers aren't in yet, Smith said. The geophysicist said he "wouldn't doubt" if at least two of the events were related.

Temblors from the three quake swarms mostly hit in three areas: Lewis Lake, the Lower Geyser Basin and the northwest part of Norris Geyser Basin.

The largest earthquake shook the ground near Old Faithful Geyser on Sept. 15.

The epicenter of the magnitude 3.6 quake, the largest in Yellowstone in about a year, was just 6 miles to the north of Old Faithful.

"Generally speaking it needs to be 3.0 or higher for individuals to feel it," Yellowstone National Park spokesman Al Nash told the Jackson Hole News & Guide (http://bit.ly/16aaX8K). "This one was somewhat stronger than that and it was in an area where a lot of people are."

Yellowstone's recent earthquake swarms started on Sept. 10 and were shaking until about 11:30 a.m. Sept. 16.

"A total of 130 earthquakes of magnitude 0.6 to 3.6 have occurred in these three areas, however, most have occurred in the Lower Geyser Basin," a University of Utah statement said. "Notably much of seismicity in Yellowstone occurs as swarms."

(Reuters) - A powerful earthquake hit a remote, impoverished part of western Pakistan on Tuesday, killing at least 30 people and destroying scores of mud houses in a thinly populated area, officials and residents said.
Tremors were felt as far away as the Indian capital of New Delhi, hundreds of miles to the east, where buildings shook, as well as the sprawling port city of Karachi in Pakistan.The United States Geological Survey said a 7.8 magnitude quake had struck 145 miles southeast of Dalbandin in Pakistan's earthquake-prone province of Baluchistan, which borders Iran.

Abdul Qadoos, deputy speaker of the Baluchistan assembly, told Reuters 30 people had been killed and at least 30 percent of houses in the impoverished Awaran district had caved in.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Nairobi, Kenya (CNN) - Sixty-eight dead. At least 175 injured. About 30 hostages still inside, as well as perhaps a dozen gunmen.

Those are the grim numbers, more than a day after Islamist attackers stormed an upscale Nairobi mall on Saturday, spraying bullets and holding shoppers captive.

The tense standoff continued into Sunday night, with sporadic gunfire heard through the day and at least one explosion.

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Suicide bombing on Pakistani church kills 75

A pair of suicide bombers detonated their explosives outside a historic church in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday, killing 75 people in the deadliest-ever attack on the country’s Christian minority, officials said.

A wing of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing in the city of Peshawar, saying it would continue to target non-Muslims until the United States stopped drone attacks in the country’s remote tribal region.

MUZAFFARNAGAR, India — Security forces have been ordered to shoot rioters on sight, as sectarian violence spread in northern India on Monday despite an army-enforced curfew imposed after deadly weekend clashes broke out between Hindus and Muslims.

Gunfire and street battles that erupted Saturday in villages around Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh state have killed at least 28 people and left many more missing, police said. Soldiers deployed to the region have been given orders to shoot rioters on sight, state government official Kamal Saxena said.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

In a recent front page article linked HERE, World Net Daily featured the Psalm 83 – Missing Prophecy Revealed, How Israel Becomes the Next Mideast Superpower DVD and book. The author of the article entitled the “Biblical doom of Damascus ‘right before our eyes’ included the quote below.
“The ancient Hebrew prophecy contained in Isaiah 17 is presently poised to find final fulfillment, and it could easily be provoked by a poorly calculated political move by America,” claims Bill Salus, author of “Psalm 83: The Missing Prophecy Revealed.” “Current contemplations of the Obama administration to strategically strike Syria to punish the Assad regime for using chemical weapons on his Syrian countrymen could be the spark that sets the entire Mideast ablaze. President Assad has threatened to attack Tel Aviv on several occasions during the Syrian revolution, and his latest threats have prompted Israelis to scramble for gas masks.

“In tandem a prophecy in Psalm 83 predicts that a climactic concluding Arab-Israeli war is coming, and Syria and Israel are listed among the participants,” Salus told WND. “It is reasonable to presume that we are living in the days of Isaiah 17 and Psalm 83, and that a single U.S. missile landing anywhere in Syria could provoke the ‘Mother of All Mideast Wars’ that is predicted in the Scriptures!”

IMPORTANT CAVEAT concerning the WND article. The author includes information about the possibility of a coming Islamic Antichrist, which Bill Salus firmly argues against. Bill believes that Psalm 83 will be a punch to the gut of Islam and that Ezekiel 38 will be an uppercut to the Jawbone. He believes that these are both Pre-Tribulation events, and that as a result Islam will be knocked down to the canvas for the ten count when the Tribulation Period commences, or shortly thereafter. Thus, Islam will likely not be fore-fronting some charismatic Muslim Antichrist in his estimation.

While U.S. president Barrack Hussein Obama prepares to wage war on behalf of the al-Qaeda led “rebels” fighting the secular Syrian government, increasing numbers of regular indigenous Syrians — including women and children — are preparing to lay down their lives to create a human shield with their own bodies to defend their nation against U.S.-sponsored terrorism and jihad. They know that, whatever Assad’s shortcomings are, he is preferable to Islamist rule — a lesson nearby Egyptians learned the hard way. Watch the video:

While U.S. leaders continue pushing for war against the Syrian government, today “Al-Qaeda-linked rebels,” reports AP, “launched an assault on a regime-held Christian mountain village in the densely populated west of Syria and new clashes erupted near the capital, Damascus, on Wednesday… In the attack on the village of Maaloula, rebels commandeered a mountaintop hotel and nearby caves and shelled the community below, said a nun, speaking by phone from a convent in the village. She spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.”

Arabic news agency Al Hadath gives more information concerning this latest terror attack on Syria’s Christians, specifically how the al-Qaeda linked rebels “terrorized the Christians, threatening to be avenged on them after the triumph of the revolution.”

Rebels have attacked a Christian village in the war torn country of Syria, beheading priests and brutally killing others. Not surprisingly, the rebels have ties to al Qaeda.
The rebels launched the assault on the ancient Christian village of Maaloula _ which is on a UNESCO list of tentative world heritage sites _ on Wednesday after an al-Nusra fighter blew himself up at a regime checkpoint at the entrance to the mountain village. The village, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Damascus, is home to about 2,000 residents, some of whom still speak a version of Aramaic, the ancient language of biblical times believed to have been spoken by Jesus.

Heavy clashes between President Bashar Assad's troops and Nusra Front fighters persisted in surrounding mountains Thursday, according to the Observatory, which collects information from a network of anti-regime activists.

Speaking by phone from a convent in the village, a nun told The Associated Press that the rebels left a mountaintop hotel Thursday after capturing it a day earlier. The nun said the frightened residents expect the Islamic militants to return to the Safir hotel and resume shelling of the community below.

"It's their home now," the nun said. She spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Al Qaeda led rebel force groups have also reportedly vowed to continue their attacks on Christians as soon as the United States "liberates" the country from it's President Bashir al-Assad.

Yesterday Republican Senator John McCain inserted an amendment into a resolution approving military force in Syria with a goal of shifting the power on the battle field from the Assad regime and to rebel forces.

Meanwhile in Egypt, Coptic Christians continue to be slaughtered and nearly 100 churches have been burned to the ground.

President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry haven't commented on the brutality against Christians in Syria and have done very little to protect Christians living in Egypt from violence being waged by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Evidence is building that Earth life originated on Mars and was brought to this planet aboard a meteorite, said biochemist Steven Benner of The Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology in Florida.

An oxidized form of the element molybdenum, which may have been crucial to the origin of life, was likely available on the Red Planet's surface long ago, but unavailable on Earth, said Benner, who presented his findings today (Aug. 28; Aug. 29 local time) at the annual Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Florence, Italy. [The Search for Life on Mars (Photo Timeline)]